


Fear of Falling

by LadyLetterbomb



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Again, Gen, also tagging, as i couldn't find a quick 'n dirty way of hosting an mp3 online, but not tonight, cuz it's like, falling, if that's a thing with you, it's more likely than you think, mcr lyric references, me? going over my grandmother's death again with even fewer details changed than normal?, not really a character, okay i found /a/ pretty way, podfic /not/ to come, so i might still, so i'm cool if anyone else wants to, the vast, uh you may want to know I like to talk about death a lot, wrote in one evening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25642072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLetterbomb/pseuds/LadyLetterbomb
Summary: I always did have a fear of falling...A first-person account of an encounter with The Vast, told in real time. Not quite a statement, but close."I always did have a fear of falling. It’s just like me to be so foolish as to forget it in a critical moment."
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Fear of Falling

I always did have a fear of falling. 

The lurch in your stomach right before the true drop, like you’re already plunging through nothing. The adjustment to the fall as you go down, down, down. Plummeting. The feeling that you’re gaining speed as everything that you know has been ripped out from your feet. The vertigo. How fast can you go? How far will you go? How long before you finally hit the ground and die? 

I have been falling for the past six hours.

That’s just an estimate — my watch is broken, and the sun is perpetually somewhere else in this fog. I don’t feel hungry. I don’t feel thirsty. I don’t have to go to the bathroom. I only have to breathe, and barely even that: I’ve been screaming for most of the past six hours. I can move, but I don’t bother to. What would it change? All I do is fall. 

It’s a special kind of falling though; my body refuses to adjust to it. I slow down, only to speed up again and be forced to relive that moment, over and over again, where the certainty of everything is forcibly torn from you. Where you open your mouth to scream and are afraid that all your guts are going to fly out of your mouth, because you can feel them pushing upwards against your chest. It’s a climax of sorts, a climax of fear perhaps. 

I always did have a fear of falling, you see, but the fear mainly wasn’t of the falling itself — it was of the fall. The lurch. The single misstep and suddenly  _ everything  _ is swept out of my grasp. 

Everything always seemed so precarious, so much so that if I fell, I couldn’t believe that things would be alright ever again after I landed. 

I don’t think things  _ will _ be alright ever again, if I do land. 

I have been falling long enough to lose track of the time. 

The air whirs around me, and I contemplate if I made a mistake to land me in this position. Perhaps I am dreaming, having a nightmare: I have already hit the ground and am in a coma.  _ Yes _ , I decide,  _ that is a nice story _ . That is the story I shall think of to get me through this. 

But deep down, I know this is the real me. Falling. And I don’t think I did anything in particular to deserve this. 

An unusually violent mid-air lurch interrupts my train of thought, but I barely scream this time; I ran out of air a while back, and haven’t quite managed to get it all back. 

We were out hiking. Everybody else had turned back, but I stayed to admire the view a little. The young and brave of us were sitting right on the edge of a cliff, like in the movies. (The young and (wisely) scared of us sat solidly on the grass, talking over our shoulders and worrying over whether they’d be able to pull anyone back if they fell.) I stayed there, my feet dangling over the water down, down, down. 

I don’t know why I chose to sit. Maybe it’s because the cliff didn’t look too steep: I might have been able to catch myself. Maybe I wanted to face my fear — everything was so light in that moment I barely felt scared. Maybe peer pressure had something to do with it, though it could be argued that there was more peer pressure to stay off the cliff. 

I was feeling unreal that day. Or maybe more real, less mundane. Above. Alive. 

The worst part is that I almost pulled myself up to safety. It was so close — my feet had touched the damp grass for one second of solid ground before I slipped. I closed my eyes and screamed, and when I opened them I couldn’t see the cliff or the water anymore. It was just clouds. All around me, a thick pea-soup fog of them. 

It’s still just clouds. I don’t understand how, but I have a horrifying feeling that there’s somehow no end. A mist, going on forever and ever and ever in a void. I can’t see where the light’s coming from, but there’s a faint warm glow everywhere. The water droplets have already soaked my clothes and now almost slide upwards as I drop through them. 

I’m cold. And scared, because I think I’m going to die soon and we all die terrified. I had so much left to do. 

I always did have a fear of falling. It’s just like me to be so foolish as to forget it in a critical moment. 

I have been falling long enough that real life seems like a distant dream. 

I can’t remember the faces or the names of any of the friends I was at the cliff with. I can’t remember my parent’s names. My name. I think it’s there, somewhere in the back of my mind. I think I shall be able to remember it if I ever land, and I take comfort in that. I remember the faces instead. My parent’s. My sister’s. Her name… I think it started with a ‘T’... Later. Later, I might know. My grandmother’s face, tears in her eyes as she looks at my grandfather’s, whose eyes haven’t opened in days. He knew for a full hour that he was going to die; his breathing became desperate and violent, though increasingly ragged. It was terrified. It was weak. It was dying and he was dying and I was in that room with him for three hours. We all were. I can’t forget it. 

I fall more and think about death. How inevitable it is. I almost wish it would take me, because this certainly doesn’t feel like life and I don’t think I’ll be living again soon. But I’m not done thinking. 

I think about my few memories of playing with him as a child. I think about his canes, which disappeared when the wheelchair appeared. I think about how he died surrounded by his family, but he wasn’t even in his own room because my grandmother rearranged the office on the 1st floor to make everything easier. I won’t even have that. I will die alone with nothing around me, familiar or not. I think about how stupid and terrible and strange the world is and wonder why I live in a universe where this can happen. 

I wonder if it’s worth keeping someone alive if they’re barely living. 

The air doesn’t seem to spin like it did when I started falling. The speed changes might be less dramatic now, or I might be getting used to them. The vertigo is a part of me, like if I stopped falling I wouldn’t be me anymore. 

I think I shall be landing soon. 

When I hit the water, I am not sure if I am even thinking anymore. I don’t feel like myself. I remember my name though. 

I remember something else about myself: I always used to have this fear, that I was going to be thrown from the stability of normal life. A fear that the ground could drop out beneath me any moment. A fear that made me dizzy and nauseous near railings. A fear that sometimes stopped me from scaling heights, and other times was the god I laughed at while I reached for the sky, though I felt something inside me cower in terror. A fear of falling. 

Somewhere in the void where I plummeted downward for half an eternity, I became more. I became better. I saw the shadow of greatness and it offered me a boon, a choice. Though I was terrified, terror did not force my hand. I straightened my spine and declared I was not afraid to keep on living, and I reached for the gift that would guide me home. I found an answer. 

I lost my fear of falling. 

I miss it sometimes. The lurch in my stomach right before the true drop, like I’m already plunging through nothing. The adjustment to the fall as I go down, down, down. Plummeting. The feeling that I’m gaining speed as everything that I know has been ripped out from my feet. The vertigo. How fast can I go? How far will I go? How long before I finally hit the ground and die? 

Because, of course, I’m only really living when I’m a dead weight cutting through the sky, freely falling. 

Down. 

Down. 

Down. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Ngl, this was originally inspired by the "I lost my fear of falling" line in "It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish".  
> I feel the need to have notes, but I don't have anything else to say.  
> The "Famous Last Words" reference was pretty transparent, but it was "I am not afraid to keep on living" if you don't listen to MCR. (What's wrong with you? /j Go listen to MCR!)


End file.
